Stories from behind the scenes of Quentin Tarantino movie ‘Kill Bill’
Quentin Tarantino was afforded the opportunity to pay homage to the great sphere of Asian cinema with his two-part series Kill Bill. Uma Thurman took on the role of The Bride, a character who seeks vengeance against her former assassination associates who attempted to kill her on her wedding day.
The first part of the duology arrived in 2003 and explained how The Bride came to be in her vengeful situation. It begins with her waking up from a coma and slowly regaining the ability to move. Eventually, Thurman’s character arrives in Tokyo to take the life of her former assassin associate O-Ren Ishii.
Vol. 2 arrived six months after Tarantino split the story into two parts. It had initially been conceived as a single feature. The second part sees The Bride take on the likes of Elle Driver, Bill’s brother Budd and Bill himself, and shows audiences The Bride’s martial arts training with the masterful Pai Mei.
There are a number of fascinating stories from behind the scenes of both Kill Bill films, so let’s quickly run through five of them now.
Behind-the-scenes stories of Kill Bill:
Uma Thurman’s car crash
One of Kill Bill’s most iconic scenes sees The Bride driving down a road with vengeance the sole object of her mind, as her hair blows furiously in the wind. While Thurman’s character brings about the end of countless lives across the two movies, the actor also almost caused her own death whilst shooting the scene. Tarantino had insisted that Thurman shoot the stunt scene herself and get the car up to 40mph.
Usually, this would not be a problem, but the seat of the car had not been screwed in correctly. The road on which Thurman was driving on was also a sand trak which the car ended up sliding on, and Thursday was thrown into a tree, suffering injuries to her leg and neck and getting a concussion. Thurman naturally accused Tarantino of trying to kill her, and the two quickly fell out.
The House of the Blue Leaves was shot in a Beijing communist propaganda studio
Yet one person that The Bride brought a more definite end to was her former assassin associate O-Ren Ishii. One of the tensest moments comes during The House of Blue Leaves showdown, in which The Bride dispatches of O-Ren’s Crazy 88 accomplices and then takes on her old friend one-on-one.
Kill Bill was the first of Tarantino’s films that he shot outside of the United States, and he shot the O-Ren showdown in Beijing, seeing as Asian cinema had influenced much of the film. Interestingly, the House of the Blue Leaves part of the film was actually shot in a studio in which Mao Zedong – the former chairman of the People’s Republic of China – had shot a number of Chinese propaganda films with the intention of increasing the popularity of his communist movement.
The two films used 450 gallons of fake blood
And as for that House of the Blue Leaves showdown, it was one of the scenes that contributed to the whopping 450 gallons of fake blood used across the two films – that specific segment used as many as 100 gallons alone. In fact, Tarantino had been adamant about creating a certain level of reality when it came to using blood in the film.
He once said: “I’m really particular about the blood, so we’re using a mixture depending on the scenes. I say, ‘I don’t want horror movie blood, all right? I want Samurai blood.’ You can’t pour this raspberry pancake syrup on a sword and have it look good. You have to have this special kind of blood that you only see in Samurai movies.” Fortunately for him, Tarantino got his “Samurai blood”, and the effects were astounding.
Tarantino spared a Crazy 88 member at the last minute
Still on the topic of that wild showdown at the House of the Blue Leaves, after The Bride takes on the 88 members of the Crazy 88 gang, she decides to spare the last of them. However, this act of kindness was not always in the script. At the last hour, Tarantino decided to spare the young man.
Hu Xioakui, who played the fortunate gang member, once said, “When [the Bride] was about to [off] me, the director saw something in my face that made him change his mind.” Tarantino later confirmed his change of heart. He said, “I thought, ‘There’s no way she’d off a kid with a mug like this.”
Tarantino insists his cast prepare by watching lots of films
Whilst Tarantino is undoubtedly an auteur of cinema and a true cinephile, it’s not always the case that his cast is. He was sure to get Kill Bill’s cast familiar with the several influences on his mind before the film’s production. As such, he regularly hosted double screenings at his house for the cast and crew.
Daryl Hannah once noted: “I asked him for some research films because I didn’t really know that much about a lot of genres he was coming from. I got 75 tapes and boxes and boxes; moving truck coming with more. There were so many movies it was unbelievable. I saw Japanese anime, I saw kung fu films, I saw Fistful of Dollars; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; all the spaghetti Westerns as well.”
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